Over-thinking everything since 2005.

March 27, 2006

The Joss Whedon Post We Had to Have, or Joss Whedon and Feminism, Part One

I don’t mean for this post to stand as the be-all and
end-all of the way feminism views the oeuvre of Joss Whedon. Rather, there’s
been a few thought-provoking posts out there in the blogosphere about Whedon’s
depictions of women, his female heroines, and their relationships with the men
around them.

So here's part one: The Good.
Feminists love Joss Whedon (mostly) because he basically
gave us a TV show we could call our own. The hero, Buffy, was a complex female
character who fought off the allegorical dangers of adolescence and ‘being
female’ in the form of vampires and other monsters.

Whedon
created the character of Buffy specifically as a mixture of weakness and strength. He
has stated explicity that he wanted Buffy to be one of society’s most vulnerable – a young girl – and yet
also a superhero: the inversion of the scared young woman who usually meets her
fate early in a horror film by being eaten/chopped to bits etc. And this works brilliantly within the horror genre, because unlike the conventional realism of say, a cop show, horror allows a much more metaphorical reading of daily life.

Horror has long confronted us with out fears in a mitigated, metaphorical form: a fictional monster almost always
functions on some commentary on what a culture or a society finds most
terrifying. Monsters also tells
us – as does horror – about our bodies and the dark fears we have about them,
exploring what Julia Kristeva called ‘the abject’; the fears of being cut and
penetrated and drained and so on.

The first couple of seasons of Buffy dealt with the real
concerns of most adolescents – fitting in, making friends, family problems,
relationships and so on, by reflecting them in this allegorical mirror. Take
the episode of BtVS called ‘The Pack’ in which a group of teenagers go on a
murderous rampage after being possessed by hyena demons. It captured perfectly
just how threatening a tight-knit gang of young people can be to any outsider; especially their peers.

Within the show, Willow and Xander are both interesting and I’d say feminist
characters. Xander is a male character but one who reads as feminised,
and despite his attempts to enact a certain sort of masculine behaviour, he
comes across as being a ‘nice’ guy instead of a jerk, and he suffers for it: he is effectively exiled within the school for his lack of masculine conformity. He also functions are the moral centre of the show, especially in later series, and his sense of fair play
and equality usually wins out (with some slippages): see, for example, when he
buys Cordelia the prom dress she desperately wants but can’t afford.

Conversely Willow is the girl that we (we geeky nerdy
feminist types, anyway) all identify with. Buffy is who we sometimes wish we
were, but Willow is who we feel the deepest empathy and identification with.
And as the show developed over the seven seasons, Willow became the most
interesting, and powerful, character. And like many long-time fans of Buffy, I
became increasingly frustrated by the way the show stymied her character,
especially in the sixth and seventh series. But I’ll save that for the bad.

Of course, as the series evolved character roles changed and
the monsters changed to reflect different issues and realities. I
don’t have time/space/patience to do a blow-by-blow exploration of the whole
seven series and the way feminist themes were teased out.

I haven’t seen Angel so I can’t really discuss it, but in
Firefly Whedon also presents sympathetic, largely interesting and
non-stereotypical female characters. Zoe is probably the most ‘masculine’
character aboard Serenity, considering the positive traits typically ascribed
to the masculine – she is stoic, calm, strong, heroic etc. Then there’s Kaylee,
who is unabashedly sexual without being overly sexualised, and of course
there’s the Buffy-esque (only crazy) figure of River who is both strong and
fragile, broken and yet integral.

Beyond the specifically feministy slant of both shows, the
other reasons many feminists love Whedon’s work is because he’s not afraid of
moral complexity. Take, in BtVS, the view on the killing of humans. Yes, lots
of vampires and other monsters are disposed of fairly heartlessly, but when
humans die, the consequences are depicted as complex, far-ranging and real in a
way that you rarely see on television. Most of the characters who are
dispatched of in Buffy series are mourned and mourned deeply – the best
example, of course, is Joyce, Buffy’s mother.

These aren’t specifically feminist concerns, of course, but
I think that any feminist critique of pop culture is interested not just in
depictions of women but in depictions of relationships and all their
complexity. It could also be argued that female-centric modes of story-telling
have usually been constructed as being about relationships – see the dichotomy
between stereotypical men’s films or ‘action’ movies, and women’s films, chick
flicks, romantic comedies.

Whedon’s shows destabilises these boundaries because he
gives us action and relationships: he gives us ‘talk’ about women’s feelings
and beliefs, and also gives us ‘action’. He further destabilises the boundaries
by making Buffy not an honorary male – like, say, Ripley in the Alien movies. Buffy remains an extremely feminine girl even while she does typically masculine things like rescuing others and exhibiting huge strength, and that this very girliness breaks
down the typical distinctions between male and female.

In Firefly and Serenity, Whedon’s moral complexity is more
about society as a whole and how it operates. Firefly is a more conventional
outsider narrative – the scrappy band of heroes fighting against the powers
that be – but I think the Reavers and their creation is a really interesting
development that I would have loved to have seen given the long-form treatment
as a series. Not saying that the movie wasn’t great, but TV shows offer a far
greater scope for teasing out ideas, threads, and characters in a way that is
impossible with the necessarily truncated world of cinema.

In Firefly, Whedon is also implicitly concerned with ideas
about ‘family’ and the ways that post-modern families are cobbled together not
out of blood relations – though these are also important. From a feminist
perspective, the idea that you can make a family out of those who share common
goals is important: the collective that respects the individual is an important
part of feminism. I may be stretching it a bit here, because I don’t think
Firefly is as implicitly feminist as BtVS, which I'll get to later.

Comments

This is very good writing. And yet, I know not what to make of it in terms of my own experiences, because in a way, I have met many Buffies. I see them, of course at the martial arts gym, and, although not all of them fight with demons, some do and have.

Kate,
I'd be interested to know how you interpret a scriptwriter like Whedon's career, and its significance for the marketplace of scripts and stories within capitalism.
The whole production of Firefly and to a certain extent the later seasons of Buffy and Angel were demanded into production by a well-organised and mobilised audience. That much I know.
Is it, though, a new frontier for consumer and audience activism, demanding better television and interesting, feminist(ish) characters and plotlines, or the same old industrial behaviour of market-centred production companies adapting to the Internet, and thus getting free market research?
Is the death of the season-formatted drama series just around the corner?
Are there any qualified pilots aboard the plane who can assist the Captain with a technical flight issue? Have you ever been in a Turkish prison?

Jennifer, I reckon that's the gap between experience and representation. I too know many Buffys and Willows and strong, smart, independent women. But I don't see them on my TV very often, or in films, or in books. That's not to say they aren't there, but that female 'characters' like Buffy are rare. Actual women like Buffy -- minus the superpowers and the being dead and the vampire boyfriends of course -- aren't.

Liam, I don't know. I'd like to think it was the latter, and though I don't want to romanticise Whedon or his achievements I do think he's genuinely interested in his audience because he, like Quinten Tarantino, is a real fan-boy and geek and he believes in his characters and stories. Beyond Whedon himself though I don't doubt the mechanisms are just as profit driven. So, a combination of both.

Your point about the destabilization of the action/relationship storytelling conventions in Buffy is a good one, and one that I've been thinking about lately. I recently read Octavia Butler's novel 'Fledgling' (which is interesting to compare with Buffy, because it also blends action and relationships, but operates from an even more strongly 'Othered' perspective, because Butler's protagonist is young, female, Black, and non-human). Reading 'Fledgling' reminded me that I haven't encountered many fast-paced stories with lots of action that unroll quickly but that also take time to develop complex relationships - let alone stories like that which feature a female hero. Buffy definitely filled a gap, in that respect.

In your brief para on Firefly, you omit the character of Inara. Why is this? This character is a bit of a mixed bag I guess but should probably be given equal treatment as the other female characters. Any comments??

Planet and Blockbuster in Mt Lawley both stock the entire series of Angel.

And excellent post. I think if I had to choose one good thing, I would say that I too like the way that BtVS, Angel and Firefly all develop the idea of the family based on shared goals and friendship. Like (Season 2?) when Spike loses a fight and mutters about a slayer with friends and family – there are many times when the main hero could have died had her/his friends not been there to rescue them.

Indeed, Anna, Buffy refuses to play along with the traditional slayer role of being an aloof outsider and that's why the watchers send in Wesley -- meanwhile, the show makes it clear that while she's a hero, she's such a good one because she's part of a 'family'.

Thanks kungfubear but I don't think they do Netflix in Australia. (Google confirms this.) They have similar services but none seem as good.

As for the capitalistic production modes of TV and film: someone like Joss Whedon is motivated less by profit interest -- granted, I'm sure he LOVES being successful and having money -- as more by a 'creative' impulse. How do you reconcile that with a purely capitalistic system? Well, it doesn't quite fit with the economic rationalist worldview of people doing things purely to gain the most financial benefit from them and it suggests that true innovation in TV and cinema and music etc is driven not so much by a desire to make wads of cash but by a desire to do something creative. Which I think is interesting if somewhat pointless, because I think the best way creative people have of succeeding in being cerative lies in a mixture of capitalism and socialism.

Personally, I think capitalism is the best for artists in the medium and long-term, but I know that artists are opportunists, and if a government offers them money, then they'll go for that, no questions asked. The drive for profit might be different to the artistic urge; but the two don't really contradict one another, either: really, they should be able to work together.

Looking at the Buffy series, it's interesting to see how Whedon works in both serious themes while playing with the television format, designed to keep viewers coming back. Charles Dickens and other novelists who wrote in serial form for magazines would have done the same thing back in the age of the novel.

Good essay Kate, can't wait for the 'Buffy Bad'. If you're interested, you should try and get a hold of the 'Fray' comics - they're written by Whedon, and they're about a future vampire slayer called Melaka Fray. Very dark, but very good.

"Joss Whedon is motivated less by profit interest -- granted, I'm sure he LOVES being successful and having money -- as more by a 'creative' impulse. How do you reconcile that with a purely capitalistic system?"

"Well, it doesn't quite fit with the economic rationalist worldview of people doing things purely to gain the most financial benefit from them..."

This is why (or, at least, one reason why) people should study a little economics before debating economic issues. The key assumptions underlying classical and neoclassical economics [let's just ditch the "economic rationalist" pejorative for a mo', shall we?] are NOT that people are motivated solely by financial benefit. This is a gross fallacy. The key operating assumptions are that people act rationally in pursuit of their self-interest.

This means that if artists attach value to the art they create, beyond its market value (i.e. what someone else will pay for it), they will spend resources (e.g. their time, labour) producing art for it's own sake. Why? Because they get enjoyment out of it. It's in their interest to create art, so they do it.

Art existed before capitalist economies, and clearly exists within capitalist economies. Most of the great works of art of the last few centuries have been produced in capitalist or proto-capitalist economies, where artists lived off the sales of their creations, and where market systems allowed the distribution of their works to consumers willing to pay for them. The idea that capitalism is somehow hostile to art is ridiculous.

Besides, Whedon is a third-generation Hollywood screenwriter. I think he would be a good deal more pragmatic than your idealised Artiste.

[/rant]

If renting "Angel" in the Wild West is so problematic, would you consent to me lending you a series or two?

I generally try not to debate economic issues, Fyodor, except on a fairly generalised level of railing against some of the less-good parts about our current system of capitalism. Mainly because it all makes my head hurt.

However, I would like to reject your assertion that I see Whedon as an artiste. I do see him as someone who has ideas and then tries to put them into action, rather than someone who wants to make money and picked working in TV and film as the way to do it. Whedon himself has acknowledged the huge difficulties he's had in getting some of his ideas translated into actual series and films -- because film and TV production studios weren't interested in anything too different in case it didn't sell. (Anyway, as good lefty I don't really buy into the 'one talented individual' way of looking at the world and I do try to resist casting Whedon as an auteur. I could go on about the structural and collective aspects of filmmaking but I won't.)

Now, I understand completely that these companies are businesses and they need to make a profit to keep creating their products so they don't want to make things that won't make them a profit. I get it. I'm not the sort of lefty who sees profit-making as bad and capitalism as innately evil.

Hence, I think you're projecting onto me the idea that capitalism is bad for creativity. I didn't say that, and I certainly don't think: ohh, TV companies are bad for wanting to make money! I just think that sometimes that the money-making drive can foster nothing more than derivative formulaic tosh ala CSI. It can also create The Sopranos and Six Feet Under.

Really, there's a constant tension between doing something interesting and doing something that will sell -- I've been in the position of having to make such choices myself, and I've chosen 'what sells' -- and I frankly don't see any way to get around that tension.

I also think all people who are interested in producing work for reasons other than profit are aware of the difficulty in making something interesting and making something sucessful.

I also am aware that I am not the final arbiter of taste and that if the masses want to watch CSI and not Buffy there's not a damn thing I can do about it. That's how markets work -- people buy want they want. However, I do think that sometimes cultural producers -- filmmakers, TV studios, etc -- fall into the trap of only giving people the same old same old because they believe it's the only thing that will sell. It comes down to the balancing act between what cultural producers are willing to risk and what audiences are willing to buy.

(I was going to point out that in the Australian context, the 'golden age' of Australian filmmaking is generally considered to be the 70s and 80s when government tax regulations allowed heavy investment and write offs on film-making projects. So it's interesting in that conext that innovation flowed from money, rather than money flowing from innovation. Of course, it also produced a lot of duds and a lot of money was wasted on long lunches that were written off as filmmaking expenses, so there you go...)

[/my own rant]

Thanks for your kind offer. I have located a cache of Angel DVDs locally and I shall be watching them when JW goes to PNG at the end of April.